Tag: nostalgia

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20th Century Nostalgia

My Kit-Cat clock stopped swinging two years ago

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I only have the Kit-Cat Klock company to blame, but I won’t even do that.

I’ve held onto my Kit-Cat clock for long enough. I’m giving up. I won’t throw it away, mind you, but I’ll relegate it to the back of a shelf in the laundry room.

In 2014, my daughter  gave me the clock as a birthday present. It operated beautifully for about two years and then stopped. After consulting the trouble-shooting website, none of the possible remedies for the malfunction fit. The only one that seemed plausible was to replace the batteries, so I did. Still no success.

So I put the dang thing away for another day. That day came and after piddling around a little more, I figured out that I had earlier replaced the batteries incorrectly. After correcting that, my Kit-Cat Clock swung again and it was just peachy… until it wasn’t. About a year later, those eyes and that tail stopped again. The clock still worked, but the eyes and the tail—the reasons one purchases a Kit-Cat Clock in the first place— didn’t.

So I replaced the batteries again. Nothing. Dorked around with the eyes again. Zilch. I took the batteries out again, and then put in different batteries. Nada. Tapped and moved a few internal parts and still no go. Then I looked a little closer at the clock. No, it wasn’t working after all.

This was more serious than I thought. The Kit-Cat clock might actually be finally dead, I thought, ready now more than ever to just chuck the whole thing in the trash.

But I didn’t. I left it, still and silent, on the wall.

About a year later, we moved. And since I’m never one to give up, I packed the clock (all the while asking myself why am I doing this?!) and moved it into our new home, where I eventually tried yet again about a month ago to revive the pile of plastic. Still no luck.

By this time, my devotion to the clock began to wane. I had lost patience and chucked the poor, cute little clock into the trash. (Okay, it’s not as cute as it used to be. Could that grin actually be a smirk?!)

However, half an hour later, I knew I couldn’t leave it there. So I went back, lifted the cat from the garbage can, dug around for the tail, and found it. And then I placed the clock and its accompanying tail in the laundry room. It’s sitting there at this very minute.

And there you have how much I like Kit-Cat clocks. Even when they don’t work, I still keep them for two possible reasons: 1) I like old things; hence my collection of twenty-four vintage metal recipe boxes that looked really awesome alongside my Kit-Cat clock… when it worked, and 2) the clocks remind me a little of my childhood and a board game we kept in the hall closet based on Felix the Cat. I remember looking at the game, but not really knowing how to play it. Or maybe I did know how to play, but didn’t have someone to play it with. (Who knows?! This was a very long time ago and I couldn’t have been more than six years old.)

It doesn’t matter. My Kit-Cat clock is now officially dead. I tried to save it. Several times, in fact.

I can’t even blame the malfunction on Chinese manufacturing. The Kit-Cat Klock Company (yes, they spell clock with a K) is based near Los Angeles in Fountain Valley, California and makes every clock right there as it has since 1932.

I only have the Kit-Cat Klock company to blame, but I won’t even do that. Even though it doesn’t work, I still like my crazy clock, and even though it makes me a little sad to see it staring lifelessly back at me in the laundry room, I probably won’t get rid of it anytime soon. Call me sentimental.

Thanks for reading! If you can believe it, this post about my Kit-Cat clock is my highest-performing post of all time on this blog. Go figure. I wrote it at the last minute just before we ventured over to my in-laws in 2016 for Christmas Eve. Today, I thought it was time for an update on my clock, even if there’s nothing really to tell except that it is now officially dead.

Categories
20th Century Nostalgia Food & Recipes Memoir & Narratives

“There is nothing like a good old recipe. If it has lasted, then it is good.” Yotam Ottolenghi, Israeli chef

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Photo: Collin Yung

I collect vintage metal recipe boxes. I have eighteen in my collection. Some were purchased from ebay.com, but most were found here and there while scouting antique shops and junk stores. Most of the boxes in my collection are empty, but three contain recipes inside. Those with the recipes are ephemeral time capsules that echo with the writings of one woman’s time spent in her kitchen.

The one above was found at a little place called Shop Girl in Jefferson City, Missouri over lunch hour one day when I was visiting the city for an education conference. On my first sweep through the store, I completely missed it. As I was leaving, the shop owners asked me what I was looking for and then directed me to a display where this one was tucked. It’s perfect. Retro graphics and typography, made in USA, hinges on the lid, a few rough and rusty spots from frequent use, and… drumroll, please… recipes inside! Many of the recipes are even handwritten and all are very fragile.

There are recipes for peanut butter cookies, molasses snaps, angel cookies, prune cookies, toffee nut bars, pecan bars, chess bars, mincemeat cookies, peanut brittle, brownie drops, pecan strips. Clearly, this baker had a sweet tooth. Or perhaps this box held only her cookie recipes.

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Many of the recipes are clips from newspapers and magazines, but a good number are handwritten in cursive on note paper. A recipe for pecan sticks is written on a sheet from a notepad printed for the “New N&W Railroad… First Rate for Fast Freight.” A recipe for pecan bars appears on a sheet for “Union Pacific Railroad, The Automated Railway that Serves all the West.” One recipe is on the back of a daily expense report for “country salesmen” for Iten Biscuit Company and its Snow White Bakeries.

It’s nice to have something specific to search for when I venture into a nostalgia shop. It’s even nicer when I spot a vintage metal recipe box to bring home.

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Categories
Family History

Popcorn with sugar was a little bit different and unexpectedly good.

I have fewer memories of my father’s parents than I do of my mother’s; however, those I do recall are vivid and important.

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In their younger years: my paternal grandparents, Granny and Grandpa Douglas, who had quite the gorgeous head of hair, didn’t he?

 

My father’s parents, William Homer Douglas, Sr. and Ruby Edith (Cook) Douglas, lived near Rich Hill, in southwestern Missouri. Even though we didn’t stay over at their house often, one summer weekend evening my sister and I did stay to watch the Miss America Pageant broadcast live from Atlantic City. I think this happened when Grandpa Douglas was still living, but I’m not sure. He may have already gone off to bed. He would pass away later when I was in the fourth grade.

Granny, my sister, and I watched the pageant huddled on the couch in the living room.  I remember the room being dark, except for the light from the TV glowing with the parades of young women wearing evening gowns, modest one-piece bathing suits, talent competition outfits, and then evening gowns once again for their interview questions from the Master of Ceremonies, Bert Parks.

At a commercial break, it was time for a snack. Granny poured RC Cola for my sister and me into glasses. Then she popped corn in a skillet with hot oil on the stove. After pouring the popcorn into a bowl, she showed us her trick of sprinkling it with sugar instead of the usual salt. Popcorn with sugar was a little bit different and unexpectedly good.

After the pageant concluded, it was time for bed. My sister and I decided who would get the first jump onto the featherbed in the guestroom.The first jump into the deep pile of feathers was always the best.  Once your body made contact with the white cotton bedspread, you would continue to sink slowly, compressing the feathers, submerging even deeper into the down. Eventually, Granny entered the bedroom to make sure we were making progress toward sleep.  (We weren’t.)

In the morning, our parents picked us up.  As we pulled out of the driveway into the gravel road, Granny waved at us from her porch with her standard wave: two hands in the air, fingers on both hands folding down in unison. Looking at her from the back window of our big red Bonneville, we headed back to Fort Scott, which was about thirty miles away.

Thanks for reading! Click “like” so others can more easily find this post, and don’t be shy about leaving a comment. Better yet: follow my blog to read more posts on a diverse range of topics and experiences. 

To family members: Leave me a note if you think some of the details in this post are wrong and I’ll edit, or if you have a recollection to add, do that, too!

Categories
Life lessons Memoir & Narratives

Cats Were Another Story

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Mildred Sneigel liked dogs. She had always owned at least one dog, even before her husband had died. Her dogs tended to be lapdogs, smaller, terrier-sized breeds that she could easily care for, groom, and converse with. Cats were another story and the two little girls who lived across the alley knew it.

One morning, on the kind of lazy summer morning that allowed them to stay in their pajamas longer than they should have, the younger of the little girls was playing with her older sister in their backyard when they heard the old woman across the alley talking.

They dropped their spoons into the mud and crawled on the damp grass each to the base of a skinny poplar tree. They listened.

The old woman said “Good doggy,” and “Be a good little doggy.” She carried a shovel and took small steps around her own backyard in her gray rubber rain boots and long, floral raincoat. Her head bobbed among the wisteria and rose bushes and was enveloped in a clear plastic headscarf, the kind that folds up into the size of a business card and then has a little snap to keep it all together.

The girls, who were not naturally inclined to torment others, nevertheless chose to torment Mildred Sneigel on this particular morning. If only they had known her better.

Their plan: crouch beneath their respective poplar trees, send meows into Mildred’s backyard, wait for her response.

At first, the sounds they made were the tiniest, tenderest of mews, the sort you might hear from a three-day-old kitten. Mildred gave no response, continuing to scrape at the topsoil to the right of the iris patch with a rusty, claw-shaped hand rake. No fun.

Then, their mews became bolder, less tender, akin to the sounds one might hear from a gangly, mildly dissatisfied teenage cat. With this, Mildred paused and looked into the branches of the elm tree above her. That was better. The girls’ eyes met and they stifled their mouths into shrugged shoulders.

Then, the older sister took the lead and lobbed the final grenade. What began as a tiny kitty mew lengthened into a quite realistic, prepubescent meow, which evolved into the gruff, gravelly howl of a geriatric feral tomcat. The duration of the meow was impressive. Its tone rose and dipped and curlicued around the older sister’s tongue, into her chest and then out through her mouth, which guzzled with silent laughter as she collapsed into a ball on the dewy grass.

By that time, her younger sister was also engulfed in secretive, red-faced laughter. Her cheeks streamed with tears. Dirt plastered the two sisters’ knobby knees and legs, grass clippings mingled in their bangs, and tears and dew dampened their pajamas.

That final lob did the trick. Mildred’s eyes tore over her shoulder, she raised her claw, and she stomped in her rubber boots to the back edge of her yard, headed directly for the girls’ poplar tree seclusion.  She scanned the length of the lot, and stooped to peer into the darkened rows of shrubbery, weeds, and decrepit lawn ornaments frosted with molds and lichens.

“Out of my yard, you cats!” she barked. “Out.”

Seeing no feline trouble-makers, she stood back up, transferring the hand rake to her other hand. “Just leave,” she spoke quietly into the shade.

She returned to the iris bushes and settled to her knees. She patted the soil with her hands, and leaned into the earth.  The girls, who had by then righted themselves to their spying positions, watched Mildred pull two wooden paint-stirrers  from a nearby bushel basket. She arranged the slats into a cross and then held it together with one hand, while the other rummaged through the basket and pulled from it a length of wire and a pair of wire cutters. She wound the wire around the center  of the cross several times to secure an “X” and then with a click, snipped the wire in two. She gently submerged the base of the cross near the far end of the little plot of soil. “Good doggy,” she said. “You were such a good little doggy.”

The girls watched in silence, then glanced at each other. Their glee turned to regret, and grief, too, since they had remembered seeing Mildred’s little dog prancing about the yard following its owner.

They stood, brushed off their dirty knees, straightened their pajama tops, and went back inside their house to change. They left their spoons in the drying mud.